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Introduction

The English word migration derives from the Latin verb migrare, meaning “to move from one place to another.” Migration may mean either a temporary or a permanent change of residence by one person or by a group of people.

Two other words associated with migration are emigrant and immigrant. An emigrant is someone who leaves one place for another. An immigrant is a person who comes into one country from another. Thus, a person who migrates to the United States from England is an emigrant from England and an immigrant to the United States.

The word migrant is used to refer to someone who regularly moves from place to place looking for work. Migrant farm workers, for instance, may live on one farm after another during the harvest season; once the crops are harvested, they will probably return to a home base until the next season.

Another type of wandering from place to place is called nomadism. Nomads, who generally live in tribal groups, have no fixed residence. Their wanderings are normally caused by economic necessity, such as the need to move herds of animals from one region to another in search of fresh grazing. Nomads usually move within a fairly restricted area. They may, in fact, make a circuit, coming back to the same places year after year. In this sense, nomadism is similar to the lifestyle of migrant workers.

Definitions of Migration

There are two basic kinds of migration—internal and external. Internal migration occurs when someone moves from one section of a country to another, usually for economic reasons. The most notable example of internal migration has been the movement from rural regions to cities. This kind of migration has occurred since the earliest recorded periods of civilization. Since the end of World War II, there has been another type of internal migration—from cities to suburbs. Many major cities in the United States and Europe have lost population because their residents have chosen to live in suburbs.

External migration involves leaving one country to live in another. This type of migration is also an age-old phenomenon, but the most dramatic example of it took place in modern times. In the Great Atlantic Migration, many millions of people left Europe for North America. The first major wave of that migration began in the 1840s with mass emigration from Ireland and Germany. In the 1880s a second and larger wave developed from eastern and southern Europe. Between 1880 and 1910 some 17 million Europeans entered the United States. The total number of Europeans reaching the United States between 1820 and 1980 amounted to 37 million. The Great Atlantic Migration was perhaps the most extensive movement of people in history.

Colonialism sometimes results in a type of external migration. If a country, because of overpopulation, sent out a large number of its citizens to live somewhere else, it would be an instance of migration. Ancient Greece, for example, planted colonies in Italy, Sicily, and Asia Minor. If, however, the colonization is merely a matter of conquest, then no significant external migration is involved. During the 19th century European countries colonized large segments of Africa and governed them for many decades. But in most cases large numbers of Europeans did not go to these colonies to live.

Reasons for Migration

If people are satisfied where they are, they will not migrate. For migration to take place, there must be some factor that pushes people out or that pulls them to a new environment. Throughout history people have left their native lands for a variety of reasons, including religious or racial persecution, lack of political freedom, and economic deprivation. The forces that attracted them to new homelands were the opposites of these: religious and political freedom, ethnic toleration, and economic opportunity.

The leading motive behind migration has always been economic. Overpopulation creates shortages of jobs and food. The natural resources of a region can become exhausted, driving a whole group of people to migrate. Farmland can become so overworked that it is no longer usable, forcing the farmers to move. People who are oppressed for any reason will in all likelihood be economically deprived as well.

The movement from farm to city is a prime example of migration for economic reasons. During the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, millions of people left poverty-stricken rural areas for the cities. Even the low-paying, seven-day-a-week jobs in early factories were better than the endless toil and misery of eking out a living on the farm. This search for jobs in urban areas has continued to be a leading cause of migration up to the present.

The impetus behind the Great Atlantic Migration, particularly in the 19th century, was also largely economic. The opportunities offered by the new industrialization were, in fact, too few for the many who wanted to take advantage of them. With more workers than jobs, wages could be kept low and hours of work long. It was the breakdown of the European agricultural system, however, that drove millions of people from the Old World to the New World.

In the decades after 1815, European agriculture was hit by a series of natural disasters, including extreme cold, too much or too little rain, flooding, and crop failures. Added to these devastating conditions was the problem of land tenure—that is, how land was owned. By law in most countries, land was passed on by inheritance in one of two ways. Either the oldest son inherited it all, or it was divided equally among all the surviving children. In either case, the result was unsatisfactory. If the oldest son inherited it, the other children had to look elsewhere for a living. If the land was divided, eventually the parcels became so small that they were not worth farming. In some countries most of the arable land was held by a few wealthy proprietors and worked by peasants who were tied to the land but had no hope of ever owning it.

In the midst of these unhappy circumstances came the news of a country across the Atlantic Ocean where land was available almost for the asking. The United States offered the promise that people only had to be willing to work in order to have their own farm.

Obstacles to Migration

Becoming an emigrant is no easy matter. For an individual it means leaving home, family, friends, and a familiar social environment to take a chance in a new place. For groups of people the situation is much the same; they must uproot themselves from one society to move into another. They probably will not know the language, the customs, or the laws. They will have to find work, learn another language, and put down new roots.

Distance can be a great obstacle to external migration. It is fairly easy to move from one city to another within a country. To move from one country or one continent to another is much more difficult. The expense of transportation alone has prevented many people in the poorer countries from going to industrialized societies where opportunities are better.

Some countries either do not want immigrants or are selective about whom they will admit. The United States, for instance, revised its immigration laws in 1924 to limit the number of people from Europe and Asia who could enter each year. (Those laws were later changed.)

Other countries do not allow people to leave. Japan prohibited emigration from 1636 to 1868. The United Kingdom passed several laws against emigration in the 18th century. In the 20th century the Soviet Union and other communist countries of eastern Europe did not allow their citizens to travel freely outside their borders. Internal migration was also restricted, and citizens had to carry identification cards to prove that they belonged where they were.

One of the difficulties faced by less economically developed countries is the loss of trained individuals such as physicians and engineers to the more industrialized countries. This so-called brain drain has created a problem for such countries as Russia, India, and Pakistan. It has also affected the countries of the Middle East and Africa. In order to combat the problem, some countries promise rewards and social status to educated people who remain in their homelands. Others use propaganda campaigns to instill patriotism.

Forced Migrations

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Not everyone who emigrates does so as a matter of choice. Sometimes external circumstances over which a person has no control force a move. Natural disasters such as famine or earthquake may impel people to relocate, but the major causes of forced migration have been war, the slave trade, and deportation.

Deportation has been practiced by countries from ancient times to the present. The practice of banishment probably originated as a primitive tribal custom whereby offending people were deprived of the protection of their family and friends and sent away. If the offending people had committed some crime, their continued presence may have been considered an offense to the tribal gods.

In ancient times the Greek city-states and Rome used exile as a form of punishment for a variety of crimes. In some of the Greek city-states, a prominent person thought to threaten the stability of the state could be ostracized, or temporarily banished by vote of the citizens. Ostracized people were allowed to keep their property, but in Rome exile meant confiscation of property and loss of citizenship.

After the end of the Middle Ages, most European countries used deportation as a punishment for criminal and political offenses. In England the Vagrancy Act of 1597 authorized the government to banish offenders to places abroad. Large-scale deportation of criminals to the American colonies took place until the American Revolution. Australia and Tasmania were colonized by England partly with deported convicts; more than 160,000 convicts were sent to Australia alone between 1788 and 1868.

Spain and France used the same method to rid themselves of convicts. Spain deported criminals to its American colonies. France sent deportees, including political prisoners, criminals, and spies, to French Guiana on the northern coast of South America and to the island of New Caledonia in the Pacific Ocean. The most notorious of the French convict colonies was Devil’s Island, off the coast of Guiana. The penal colonies in South America were not abolished until World War II.

In Russia deportation of political prisoners to Siberia began during the reign of Tsar Peter the Great in 1710. During the 19th century thousands of exiles were sent to Siberia each year. This practice was also used in the Soviet Union, especially in its treatment of political dissidents. Some individuals were deprived of citizenship and exiled to the West, as was the case with the Soviet Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

In the United States citizens cannot be deported, and in most cases deportation of aliens is a legal procedure. Aliens enjoy the protection of the U.S. Constitution and usually may be deported only after a court hearing. There have been times of political unrest during which political dissidents have been deported after only the most perfunctory legal proceedings. This happened just after World War I, when many anarchists and communists were deported to the Soviet Union. Following the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, New York, and Washington, D.C., the United States adopted measures permitting the swift deportation of undocumented immigrants (people who immigrated illegally) from countries where terrorists were operating. Thousands of individuals were targeted for deportation, mostly to predominantly Muslim countries.

The United States also carries out two types of removal that do not allow legal intervention. In expedited removal the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can deport people who are caught while in the process of trying to enter the country illegally. In administrative removal the DHS can deport aliens who have been convicted of an aggravated felony, such as murder, kidnapping, or drug trafficking.

The slave trade from Africa uprooted many millions of people from their homes and brought them to the Americas. Slavery had existed as a human institution for centuries, but the slaves were usually captives taken in war or members of the lowest class in a society. The black African slave trade, by contrast, was a major economic enterprise. It made the traders rich and brought an abundant labor supply to the islands of the Caribbean and to the American colonies.

Throughout history war has been a leading cause of forced migration, and the 20th and early 21st centuries were no exception. The major occasions of massive dislocation after 1900 included World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the Turkish War of Independence. They were followed by World War II, the partition of the Indian subcontinent, and the wars in the Middle East after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Later massive migrations took place after the communist takeover of China, the Korean War, the revolutions in Hungary (1956) and Cuba (1959), and the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Others occurred with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the events surrounding the Persian Gulf War in 1990 and 1991, and the Syrian civil war beginning in 2012. (See alsorefugees.)

History of Migration

There were many mass migrations in the prehistoric era. These movements, however, are undocumented. What is known of them comes from the findings of archaeologists and the legends of ancient societies.

Ancient Migrations

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One of the most ancient known migrations was that of the people who came to the Americas sometime between 30,000 and 3000 bc. These ancestors of Native Americans are known as Paleo-Indians. They probably went from Asia to Alaska over a land bridge that crossed the Bering Strait in prehistoric times. North and South America were then presumably empty of human habitation. Over thousands of years these people moved south and east. Their greatest centers of population developed in Central and South America, where the civilizations of the Aztec, Inca, and Maya later appeared.

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One mass migration in the ancient period that has been documented in writing is the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt. As told in the Old Testament book of Exodus, it was an escape from slavery to freedom and a search for a “land flowing with milk and honey.” The Hebrews settled in Palestine where, after some centuries, they built a powerful kingdom. This ancient kingdom and the presence of the Hebrews in Palestine over many centuries provided the rationale for establishing the new state of Israel in 1948. Modern Israel is mainly the product of migrations of Jews from Europe, Asia, and North Africa following World War II.

The First Great Migrations

The migration of Germanic tribes that overran the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries ad was one of the largest movements of people in history. The Mediterranean world of the Roman Empire was bordered on the north by regions populated with numerous Germanic tribes. About ad 370 a people called the Huns swept out of Central Asia. Their armies of mounted archers struck fear into all the European tribes. The Huns built up a large empire in southeastern Europe and, in so doing, drove other tribes westward. The Roman Empire in the West was overrun by these tribes. Among those fleeing the Huns were the Visigoths, who invaded the empire in 376. In 406 the Vandals, the Suebi, and the non-Germanic Alani invaded Gaul (France) and Spain. In 455 several Germanic tribes, led by the Ostrogoths, conquered Italy. Some 20 years later, in 476, the Western Roman Empire came to an end when the young emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed and exiled.

Migrations in the Middle Ages

For a thousand years, from the end of the Roman Empire in the West until the middle of the 15th century, the history of Europe, Asia, and North Africa consisted of an almost unbroken series of invasions, wars, and conquests. During the Middle Ages, Arabs, Mongols, Franks, Vikings, Christian Crusaders, and Turks all crossed vast areas searching for new lands to conquer.

In the 7th century a new religion, Islam, succeeded in uniting the many tribes of Arabia. Under the banner of this religion, Arab armies conquered lands from the Indus River in the east to Spain in the west. All of the Middle East and North Africa was in their hands within a few decades.

The great Frankish monarch Charlemagne had established the most powerful kingdom in Europe in the 9th century. However, the Muslim conquests effectively barred the Franks from extending their empire to the south. Based in what is now France, the Franks moved eastward against the Germanic Saxon tribes in order to expand their kingdom. This in turn drove the Saxons northward into Scandinavia.

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This Saxon migration may have been one cause of the raids by the Scandinavian Vikings, or Northmen, who ravaged Europe from the 9th to the 11th century. The Vikings overran much of England and Ireland and settled the region of Normandy (meaning “land of the Northmen”) in France. They conducted raids in Portugal, Spain, and Morocco. The Vikings also founded settlements in the Baltic countries and penetrated deep into the heart of Russia. In 1060 descendants of the Vikings in Normandy set out to conquer Sicily, and in 1066 the Normans under Duke Williamconquered England. The Norman Kingdom of Sicily lasted until 1194.

In 1095 Pope Urban II called upon the Christian nobles of Europe to undertake a Crusade to recover the Holy Land (Palestine) from the followers of Islam. During the next two centuries, there were seven major Crusades, often involving thousands of people. The Crusaders failed to establish a permanent kingdom in Palestine, but they did succeed in weakening the Eastern Roman Empire, or the Byzantine Empire.

The greatest threats to the states of Europe during the Middle Ages came from the East—a series of invasions by Turks and Mongols. From the 6th to the 12th century, various Turkish peoples controlled empires ranging from Mongolia to the Black Sea. In the 11th century the Turks began moving southwest, conquering much of the region that now includes Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Anatolia.

In the 13th century the Mongols, led by Genghis Khan, conquered the Turkish empires as well as present-day Bulgaria, Hungary, and most of Russia. The devastation wrought by the Mongols depopulated eastern Europe and opened it up for settlement by other neighboring peoples.

In the 14th century the Ottoman Turks of Asia Minor began moving northward into the Balkan territories. They conquered Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) in 1453, thus destroying the Byzantine Empire, and for 230 years they threatened central Europe.

The wars and invasions of the Middle Ages displaced great numbers of people and led to the transfer of whole groups from one location to another. Over a period of several hundred years, these migrations transformed the ethnic and linguistic composition of Europe and much of Asia. The foundation had been laid for the modern nation-states of Europe and Asia.

The Age of Discovery

In the 15th century the Ottoman Turks, who were followers of Islam, controlled all of North Africa and the lands in the eastern Mediterranean region. If the merchants of Europe wanted to trade with southern or eastern Asia, their cargoes had to pass through these regions under any terms the Ottoman Turks cared to impose. The Europeans began to search for new trade routes to the East.

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One way to reach the East was to sail around Africa. A Portuguese navigator, Vasco da Gama, made such a voyage in 1497–98. Christopher Columbus proposed another way to the East, by sailing westward across the Atlantic Ocean. His first voyage, made in 1492, resulted in the European discovery of the New World. Over the next three centuries, the Americas were explored and colonized. Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands, and Sweden sent out expeditions and colonists to settle various regions of North and South America. (See alsoAmericas, early exploration of the; Americas, colonization of the.)

The number of people who came from Europe to live in the Americas in the 300 years ending in 1800 was not large. By 1790, for instance, only a few hundred thousand individuals had come from Spain to the colonies. Only 25,000 immigrants had come to the French possessions in Canada. The population of the United States in 1790 was about 4 million, of whom 60,000 were free blacks and 400,000 were slaves. The largest contributor of colonists to the Americas was Great Britain. During the 17th century about 250,000 English immigrants arrived, settling primarily in Virginia, Massachusetts, and the Caribbean islands. In the 18th century more than 1.5 million people came from the British Isles to America. The majority of newcomers to the Western Hemisphere, however, were African slaves. About 10 million of them were brought over before 1800.

During the period from 1789 to 1815, migration from Europe was greatly hindered by the wars that grew out of the French Revolution and the activities of Napoleon, emperor of France. Once peace had settled over Europe, with the fall of Napoleon, the greatest mass migration in history began.

The Great Migration

Statistics on migration are unreliable, but it has been estimated that from the early 16th century to the mid-20th century more than 60 million people left Europe to seek new homes overseas. Many of them went to Australia, South Africa, India, and other colonial plantations, but most went to the Americas. This migration across the Atlantic Ocean brought more than 41 million people from Europe to North America in the 19th and 20th centuries. Of these, about 36 million went to the United States and 5 million to Canada. More than 15 million people went to other countries in the Western Hemisphere. Other areas receiving substantial immigrant populations were Africa, with 1.5 million; Australia, with about 3 million; and New Zealand, with about 600,000.

The United States

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZC2-1255)

The United States is a country of great ethnic diversity. Americans claim dozens of different ancestries. Among the largest ancestry groups today are Asian Indian, Chinese, Dutch, English, Filipino, French, German, Irish, Italian, Mexican, Norwegian, Polish, Puerto Rican, Russian, Scotch-Irish, Scottish, sub-Saharan African, Swedish, and West Indian.

By 1780 the estimated colonial population was about 2,780,000. After 1820, when an official count of immigration began, the number of immigrants began increasing until by 1830 the arrivals numbered more than 20,000 each year. Immigration continued a general upward trend, with the average immigration climbing from 60,000 in the 1831–40 decade to 260,000 in the 1851–60 decade.

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German farmers swarmed into Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri as early as 1830, when land sold at $1.25 an acre. Norwegians and Swedes followed during the next few decades, and many of them found new homes amid congenial surroundings in Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Wisconsin.

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Famine in Ireland in the early 1840s, brought on by the failure of the potato crop, caused the deaths of thousands. American relief ships that went to Ireland with food returned with immigrants. These newcomers settled first in New York City and Boston, Massachusetts. Some worked as unskilled factory laborers. Others drifted west with construction gangs. The Irish were ambitious, especially for their children, and Irish-born parents made sacrifices to keep them in school and took pride in seeing them fill positions in the various professions and attain power in political offices.

At about the same time, the collapse of a revolutionary movement in Germany forced thousands to seek safety in America. These refugees were men and women of high ideals. Many were university students or graduates. Those whose roots were in the soil were excellent farmers. They took with them their continental customs, their music, and their cuisine and left an indelible imprint on such cities as Chicago, Illinois; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Cincinnati, Ohio; and St. Louis, Missouri. In the decades that followed, the German and Irish tides were joined by those from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

During the American Civil War, the flow of immigration decreased. However, an act of 1864, repealed four years later, called for the president to appoint a commissioner of immigration. It laid down plans to encourage immigration to fill jobs left vacant as a result of wartime casualties and to settle unpopulated areas of the country. Many states made special efforts to attract settlers and even sent agents to European ports of embarkation to recruit them. Western railroads competed with the states in inducing immigrants to take up the land that the government had granted them. The railroads offered reduced steamship and rail fares along with other inducements the states could not provide.

A further impetus to European immigration was the agricultural distress on the Continent in the 1880s. Wheat from Minnesota and the Dakotas was underselling European grain, and European farmers were bankrupt. Farmers from northwestern Europe poured into the Mississippi River valley and westward.

At first, the United States held out open arms to the Europeans. There were canals to be dug, railroads to be built, minerals to be mined, forests to be cut, farmlands and prairies to be cultivated, and industrial plants to be manned. However, in the early 1880s a significant change occurred. Whereas most earlier immigrants had shared the northern and western European origin of most early settlers, arrivals from southern and eastern Europe were now becoming more numerous.

In the 1851–60 decade, only about 1 percent of all immigrants to the United States were from southern or eastern Europe. By the 1881–90 decade, the percentage had risen to almost 20 percent, and by the 1901–10 decade, it was more than 70 percent. Italians, Portuguese, and Spaniards, as well as Greeks, Jews, Russians, and other eastern Europeans, continued to arrive in the United States in large numbers until World War I.

The newcomers differed from the earlier immigrants in several respects. Some were men who had left their families in Europe and planned to return to them when they had saved a little money. Most settled in large cities, where they found work only in the hardest and lowest-paying jobs. Many had little or no education. Faced with employment and language handicaps, they tended to congregate in communities of their own people. Many clung to their Old World customs, thus delaying Americanization. Unscrupulous politicians gained votes by making special appeals to national groups. A number of foreign-language communities became badly overcrowded and degenerated into slums.

Despite these handicaps, many European immigrants stayed to marry, rear families, and become loyal American citizens. In 1882, however, a law was passed to exclude various categories such as those considered lunatics, idiots, convicts, immoral persons, paupers, and people likely to become public charges. Three years later the Alien Contract Labor Law prohibited American employers from importing workers from Europe under contract. An act of 1917 required a literacy test for immigrants over 16 years old. An act of 1918 excluded anarchists and members of any group advocating the violent overthrow of government. In practice, however, these restrictions barred very few from the country.

The end of World War I brought about an exodus from war-stricken countries. In 1920, 246,295 people entered the United States from Europe; in 1921, it was 652,364. Unemployment was widespread, and the flood of immigrants added to the difficulties. Farmers and organized labor wanted immigration curtailed. Other groups pressed for restrictions on cultural grounds.

In 1921 Congress applied the first effective brakes by passing a quota law. This limited the number of immigrants from any European country to 3 percent of the nationality in the United States in 1910. The quotas had the effect of greatly restricting immigration from southern and eastern Europe. Under this law, the numbers admitted reached half a million by 1923, but the era of unlimited immigration had come to an end.

An act of 1924 reduced the quotas to 2 percent, based on the 1890 census. This restricted the number of immigrants to 180,000 the next year. Amendments to the law, effective in 1929, fixed an annual total of 150,000. Based on the 1920 census, the total was divided among countries in proportion to the number of inhabitants in the United States in 1920 having that national origin. Each country was given a quota of at least 100, however, and spouses of United States citizens and their children under 18 years of age were admitted outside the quotas, as were natives of the Western Hemisphere.

Asians were welcomed less than Europeans. Anti-Chinese riots in 1880 had led to a treaty with China that barred Chinese unskilled laborers from the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited all Chinese immigration, and it set a precedent for later restrictions against immigration of other Asians. After renewed fear, Japan promised to stop issuing passports to unskilled workers. The Immigration Act of 1917 halted immigration from nearly all of Asia. Another act passed in 1924 established immigration quotas by country but maintained the ban on Asian immigration. China’s heroic stand on the side of the Allies in World War II changed public opinion, and the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943. An annual quota of 105 was allotted for immigrants of Chinese descent, and Chinese living in the United States were made eligible for naturalization.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (McCarran-Walter Act) reorganized previous laws into one comprehensive act. The total number of quota immigrants was fixed at 154,657, with the 1920 census as the base for quotas and with a quota of at least 100 for each country. Immigration from Asian counties (not just China) was again permitted. Numbers were also granted for immigrants from newly independent countries. Spouses and children of United States citizens and natives of the Western Hemisphere remained exempt.

Amendments in 1965 abolished quotas by country and in their place set up limitations by hemisphere. Under this system, 170,000 visa numbers were allocated to Eastern Hemisphere countries annually, with a maximum of 20,000 allotted to any one country. Preference was given to relatives of United States citizens and alien residents, to professional and skilled persons, and to refugees. A total of 120,000 immigrant visas were available annually to the Western Hemisphere on a first-come, first-served basis. Under the 1965 act, parents of United States citizens were included with spouses and children as immediate relatives, who were exempt from the numerical limitations in both hemispheres. All countries within each hemisphere potentially had an equal quantity of immigrant visa numbers available to them.

From 1965 to 1975 the largest source of immigrants was Mexico, followed by Cuba, the Philippines, Italy, and Taiwan. By 1978, Indochinese refugees, fleeing war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, were arriving in large numbers. Of the more than 800,000 persons who entered the United States in 1980, more than 150,000 were refugees from Indochina, and some 125,000 were Cubans seeking political asylum. From 1981 to 1989 almost 2.5 million people emigrated from Asia and were granted legal permanent residence in the United States. By 1990 the Asian population had increased by nearly 108 percent from its level a decade before.

Illegal immigration became a growing problem in the United States in the early 1980s. It was estimated that 1.5 million people entered the country illegally in 1980, joining the 2 million undocumented immigrants or more already there.

In 1986, after years of heated debate, the Immigration Reform and Control Act was passed and signed into law. The law gave legal status, or amnesty, to undocumented aliens who could prove continuous residence in the United States since before January 1, 1982. It created temporary resident status for agricultural workers. The most controversial provisions included fines and even jail terms for employers who knowingly hired undocumented aliens. By 1990 there were reports of a widespread pattern of ethnic discrimination by employers afraid of violating the law unintentionally. Changes in immigration laws affected other groups as well. In 1990 many Soviet Jews who lacked relatives in the United States were ineligible for resettlement there and migrated instead to Israel.

The Immigration Act of 1990 brought about the most sweeping changes since 1924, many designed to correct the imbalances of previous policies. For 1992–94 the total number of immigrants allowed each year was increased to 700,000, of whom 465,000 were to be relatives of American citizens or permanent resident aliens. Thereafter, the number would drop to 675,000 in 1995. Quotas were also increased for skilled workers; residents of countries that had been allowed relatively few immigrants in recent years, such as Italy and Poland; and spouses or children of aliens who had gained legal status under the 1986 law. About 30,000 Irish undocumented aliens were granted permanent residency. Salvadorans and other Central American refugees were granted an 18-month safe haven. Some restrictions, including the exclusion of people with AIDS, were relaxed. The law established a lottery, held annually from 1991 to 1994, for 40,000 permanent resident visas (“green cards”), of which 40 percent were reserved for Irish immigrants.

The proportion of immigrants in the total U.S. population, which has varied over time, grew in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. By the start of the 21st century more than 10 percent of the people living in the United States were immigrants. In addition, undocumented aliens accounted for another few percent of the country’s total population. They were estimated to number more than 10 million. The majority of the unauthorized immigrants came from Mexico and Central America. In wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, lawmakers began to focus on securing U.S. borders to curtail illegal entry. The government strengthened immigration enforcement laws and personnel and enhanced efforts to identify and deport undocumented immigrants. However, immigration remained a volatile issue, with public demonstrations against raids and deportation occurring throughout the United States. “Sanctuary” cities and counties had official policies of sheltering undocumented immigrants.

The United States also experienced extensive internal migration in the 20th century. During World War I and afterward, thousands of blacks left the South for northern industrial centers, in what became known as the Great Migration. Poor white residents of the South and the Appalachian regions also went to northern cities looking for jobs. Farm populations continued to decline as residents of rural areas moved to the cities.

Since 1960 the fastest growing regions of the country have been the South and the West. Drawn by a more moderate climate and lower overhead costs, many industries and working people have moved away from the Northeast and the Midwest. Thousands of retired people have settled in the so-called Sun Belt states.

Canada

About 5 million immigrants, mainly from Europe, entered Canada in the 19th and 20th centuries. During the same period thousands of French Canadians immigrated to the United States in search of better economic opportunities.

When the transcontinental railroads were built across the Canadian prairies, a flood of immigrants poured into the agricultural lands of the west. Immigration climbed from less than 50,000 in 1901 to more than 400,000 in 1913.

Immigration from Europe came to a halt during World War I. It resumed in 1920 and reached a new peak between 1926 and 1929. During the economic depression of the 1930s and early ’40s, immigration again slowed, reaching a low of 7,576 in 1942.

After World War II immigration to Canada greatly increased, stimulated by the country’s remarkable postwar economic growth. From 1950 through 1959 more than 1.5 million people entered the country. A record was set in 1957 with 282,164 arrivals. About one-fourth of all European refugees settled in Canada after World War II. During World Refugee Year (1959–60) Canada admitted more than 3,500 refugees. Among them were more than 200 who had tuberculosis and had been stranded for years, with their families, in European refugee camps.

Immigration to Canada again fell off in the 1960s because of new restrictions against unskilled laborers. New regulations were initiated in 1972 to curb the rising number of Vietnam-era draft dodgers and armed forces deserters who fled to Canada from the United States. In 1979 Canada offered to provide homes for up to 50,000 refugees from Indochina.

In 1989 the Canadian government introduced tougher immigration laws that allowed officials to reject migrants at the airport and order them to leave the country within 72 hours. The new laws also allowed Canadian officials to deny amnesty for the 85,000 foreign nationals already in Canada claiming political asylum. The largest group of immigrants in 1988 and 1989 were Chinese from Hong Kong—often businesspeople who promised to create jobs or to invest large amounts in the economy. In 1990 the federal government announced a five-year plan to increase immigration, raising annual limits from 175,000 to 250,000 people and favoring independent individuals over dependents of citizens and resident aliens.

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In 2002, in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, Canada passed the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. It replaced the Immigration Act, which had been passed in 1976. The new law strengthened the country’s ability to detain and deport people suspected of threatening national security. It also limited poorer classes of immigrants and favored those with multiple skills. Still, Canada was committed to remaining a diverse country. In the 2010s about 250,000 or more immigrants were admitted each year. Many came from the Philippines, India, China, Pakistan, and Iran. Starting in 2015, Canada admitted thousands of refugees fleeing violence in Syria.

South America

Argentina and Brazil received most of the immigrants who went to South America. More than 6.5 million immigrants arrived in Argentina in the 100 years before World War II. During the same period, Brazil received at least 4.5 million.

The immigrants who chose to go to South America were generally from southern Europe. The climates of the two regions are similar, and there are also cultural ties. More than 50 percent of Argentina’s immigrants were from Italy, while 33 percent came from Spain. After World War II more than 1 million immigrants arrived in South America, again primarily in Argentina and Brazil. Both internal and external migrants still favored those two countries, as well as Chile, in the early 21st century.

Australia and New Zealand

Like the United States and Canada, Australia and New Zealand are considered countries of immigrants. The first immigrants to Australia were the Aboriginal peoples, who arrived tens of thousands of years ago. The first people to settle New Zealand were the Maori. Europeans immigrated to both places much later. After the British colonization of Australia and New Zealand, both long had populations consisting largely of British and Irish immigrants and their descendants. After about the mid-20th century, additional immigration diversified the populations. (See alsoimmigration to Australia.)

The First Fleet carrying British colonists to Australia arrived there in 1788. In the earliest decades of colonization, Australia was basically a dumping ground for British convicts. Initially, most of the immigrants to Australia were transported criminals, though some colonists went there voluntarily in search of new opportunities. In the course of the 19th century, the policy of forced migration was changed, and many additional free settlers arrived.

Virtual Museum of Italian Immigration in the Illawarra; used with permission of ITSOWEL

In 1901 the Immigration Restriction Act essentially halted the immigration of non-Europeans. It was aimed especially at keeping Asians from immigrating to Australia. The 1901 act was the central part of what became known as the government’s White Australia Policy, which was intended to ensure that the country’s population remained mostly white. After World War II the migration of Europeans to Australia increased dramatically. Newcomers arrived from Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, Germany, Poland, and Hungary. About half of the new immigrants came from Great Britain, South Africa, Canada, and New Zealand. After 1956 the much-criticized White Australia Policy was relaxed. It was abandoned in 1973.

In 1978 far-reaching changes were made in Australia’s immigration policies. A new selection process was established. Prospective immigrants were to be evaluated by such criteria as family ties with Australia, occupational skills, literacy in the mother tongue, knowledge of English, and prospects for successful settlement. Starting at the end of the 20th century, Australia began to accept increasing numbers of refugees from war-torn countries, including in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. In the 21st century the number of immigrants from India and China began to surpass that of the United Kingdom.

Nick Servian—Picade LLC/Alamy

Likewise, British immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries greatly influenced New Zealand. Prior to that, the Maori, a Polynesian people, were the country’s only inhabitants. They arrived in New Zealand probably from Tahiti about ad 1300. The islands and the people remained largely undisturbed until about 1840, when groups of British settlers began arriving. In the 1860s Australians arrived to take advantage of a gold rush and were soon followed by Chinese immigrants. Shortly thereafter, however, New Zealand passed the Chinese Immigrants Act of 1881 to restrict Asian settlement. It included a Chinese poll tax, which was eventually waived in 1934 and repealed in 1944.

Meanwhile, the country encouraged immigration from Europe, especially the United Kingdom. Throughout most of the 20th century, New Zealand provided many British and Irish citizens with financial assistance to relocate. In the 1970s, however, the government reviewed its immigration policy and ended unrestricted access to British immigrants. At the same time, it confirmed free access to immigrants from Australia, the Cook Islands, Niue, and Tokelau. In 1987 the Immigration Act switched the focus from a person’s nationality to job skills. By the early 21st century, New Zealand had become more culturally diversified.

China

For many centuries people from China have migrated to other parts of Asia, particularly Southeast Asia and the Philippines, and to the islands of Oceania. Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, and Vietnam received the largest number of Chinese immigrants. After the communist victory in China in 1949, about 2 million Chinese from the mainland went to Hong Kong and Taiwan. In the late 1970s this pattern of out-migration was reversed, as Chinese left war-torn Indochina to return to their homeland. Since then, Chinese emigration has once again increased, with large numbers of wealthier, well-educated people seeking educational and occupational opportunities abroad.

In 1988 more than 45,000 people left Hong Kong; half went to Canada. The Chinese government’s violent suppression of the pro-democracy movement in 1989 led to increased emigration from Hong Kong. More than 400,000 people left Hong Kong between 1990 and 1997, when the former British colony reverted to Chinese rule. Emigration dropped sharply after 1997, however, and remained that way through the early 21st century.

Eastern Europe

Since the 1820s, great internal migrations have taken place in Russia. In the period up to 1914, about 7.5 million people emigrated from European Russia (west of the Ural Mountains) to Siberia. Between the two world wars, another 6 million went to Siberia, and more than 23 million people moved from rural areas to towns and cities within the Soviet Union. Between the Russian Revolution of 1917 and 1921, about 15 million Russians fled their homeland for destinations in Europe and the United States.

For decades after the revolution, the Soviet government tightly controlled the movement of its citizens. In the 1970s and ’80s, some political dissidents and several thousand Soviet Jews were allowed to leave, mostly for Israel or the United States. In the late 1980s, as a result of Soviet relaxation of exit visa regulations, the number of Soviet Jews arriving in the United States increased dramatically, including an estimated 48,000 in 1989.

The liberalization of the political systems in Poland and Hungary in 1989 provided an escape route for thousands of East Germans, and with the opening of the Berlin Wall the numbers mounted; 350,000 East Germans moved to West Germany in 1989, and in early 1990 they averaged 2,000 a day. An additional 350,000 emigrants from other eastern European countries joined the exodus. Another effect of the political changes was a sharp cut in the number of Poles and Hungarians admitted to the United States as refugees since they no longer had to fear persecution in their homelands, though economic distress led many to leave eastern Europe. In the 1990s Yugoslavia’s civil war—and the eventual formation of the countries of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia from Yugoslavia’s territory—and conflicts in the former Soviet Union displaced millions of people.

Western Europe

After World War II, the countries of western Europe began the immense task of reconstructing devastated population centers and industrial capacity. Faced with severe labor shortages, many of them encouraged the immigration of foreign guest workers, especially from Africa and the Middle East. Until the late 1970s millions of workers arrived in Europe, frequently with their families, and some eventually made permanent homes there. Workers also moved from the depressed areas of Italy and Greece to northern Europe. In the 1980s immigration from other continents resumed its earlier growth. Surging numbers of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa—especially refugees escaping violence in war-torn countries such as Syria and Iraq and from repressive governments such as Eritrea—arrived in western Europe in the early 21st century. That unplanned growth placed a strain on the governments of some of the countries.

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